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Most of us do something like that when we first get money we earned ourselves, myself included. Depending on when you did actually stopped wasting money, this may have had a massively positive impact on your life. If you learned that lesson fairly early, it translated into you making wise spending choices as an older adult. You are successful today because you wasted that money back then and made changes afterward.
Struggling taught me the value of saving. I was still in highschool and working for minimum wage when I moved out on my own, and that was when I stopped wasting money. I was more concerned with securing my next meal. Experiencing it at that age absolutely influenced my habits into adulthood, to the point I agree about calling it a personal success - that is to say I'm still poor, but nowhere near as screwed as I would be if I had to learn that lesson today.
Struggling taught me that if I don't use my money right now it'll be gone.
And I'm not saying that to contradict you. It's funny how different people learn different lessons from the same experience. I grew up dirt poor. If I didn't spend my money as a kid it might be called upon. And that's the lesson I took for years. I didn't really start saving seriously until I was closing in on 40. I have money in retirement now (and will likely retire early), but it's because I did without for a few years trying to play catch up while making good money. It's not a tactic I recommend. If I had started it back when I was 18 I could be really close to retirement right now.
My friend's family was like that growing up. Use it or lose it. From what I can tell he had a hard time growing out of it, but seems to be doing better now. He was already used to being poor, but raising his own family was a new level of awareness and probably his "lightbulb moment". Finding a decent job certainly helped, too.